Eastern Virginia Medical School’s Strelitz Diabetes Center at Sentara Obici Hospital held an open house on Friday to introduce its services to the community.

It has been in operation since January and is seeing “more and more patients,” said Dr. David Lieb, associate professor of internal medicine at EVMS and director of the center. It is located at the hospital’s medical office building, 2790 Godwin Blvd.

The center offers diabetes screenings and also acts as a diabetes specialist in conjunction with patients’ primary care physicians, Lieb said. It sees patients with and without insurance.

Specialists connected with the center are available to treat all of the major side effects of diabetes — foot problems, kidney problems and vision problems.

“We’re kind of covering all the different potential complications of diabetes,” Lieb said.

The center partners with the hospital’s diabetes educators. It has screened about 300 people since January, Lieb said.

The Obici Healthcare Foundation funded the center because Suffolk and Western Tidewater have among the highest rates of diabetes, as well as complications and deaths from it, in Virginia.

“Why that is isn’t clear,” Lieb said. “Part of that could be there’s not much access to care. It’s a more rural community.”

The area also has a higher percentage of black residents than the state as a whole, which may also contribute to the high statistics. Blacks are more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes than most other races, Lieb said.

Lieb said the center is helping with early intervention, which leads to better outcomes down the road.

“Early intervention is important,” he said. “We’ve been getting out in the community and doing more screenings at churches and health fairs and that sort of thing. It’s exciting. I think we’re having an impact on people’s health already.”

Gina Pitrone, executive director of the Obici Healthcare Foundation, said she and the foundation are excited about the center.

“I think the most important thing now is to get the word out that this resource is available,” she said. “Hopefully, it will help reduce the effects of diabetes.”

Pitrone and Lieb said they hope to be able to get more primary care physicians and optometrists — many diabetics first learn there’s a problem through an eye exam, Lieb said — to learn about the center in order to be able to refer patients there.

The new center is an extension of the Strelitz Diabetes Center on the EVMS campus in downtown Norfolk, which opened 25 years ago.

Call 446-5908 for more information or to get an appointment.